lire vs j Newswire
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
lire
This app transforms partial RSS feeds into full-text articles, eliminating the need to click "Read more" links. It offers offline reading and syncs with various services, providing a seamless news consumption experience.
- Full-text RSS feed conversion
- Offline reading of cached articles
- Syncs with Feedly, Feedbin, and more
- iCloud sync option
- No need to click 'Read more' links
- Standalone feed reader functionality
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Love RSS feeds? So do we!! RSS feeds are a great way to follow updates on your favorite website. However, some sites set up their feeds to only show a portion of each entry, you know, to get you to click through to their actual website. We find that really annoying, and we're sure you do too. Which is why, unlike other RSS feed readers, that either push you into a browser (in-app or otherwise), or depend on third party text parsing services and require you to be online to fetch the full text of one article at a time (which makes it no different from having to click/tap through to a website), in lire, you get your favorite RSS feeds as they should've been. You don't need to click through to any website (though, you do still have the option to, if you really wanted). It takes your favorite partial feeds, does its magic, and converts them in to full feeds, so you don't have to click/tap on those annoying 'Read more' or 'Continue reading' links. Once they're cached, you don't even need to be connected to read your full-text feeds. Use as a standalone feed reader, sync with iCloud, or, sync with any of the several services: Feedly, Feedbin, FeedHQ, The Old Reader, Inoreader, BazQux Reader, Newsblur, Feed Wrangler, FreshRSS, Miniflux, Nextcloud News, Tiny Tiny RSS.
j Newswire
Get straight to the facts with this news app. It delivers headlines and the essential information behind them, organized by topic. Focuses on delivering news without extraneous details.
- Headline delivery
- Factual reporting
- Organized by beats
- Concise information
- No extraneous details
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Newswire. A title and the facts behind that title. Nothing else. Organized into beats.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: j Newswire at Free against lire's $9.99. j Newswire also leads on rating (5.0 vs 4.4) and in-app purchases (none vs 5). lire's advantage is ratings volume (158 vs 4) and chart position (#6 vs unranked). On update cadence, ads and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
j Newswire is free to download; lire costs $9.99 up front. lire sells 5 one-off in-app purchases. j Newswire asks for nothing beyond the download.
j Newswire holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.4. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: lire has 158 ratings behind it against 4, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 68% of lire's written reviews are positive against 100% of j Newswire's.
lire ships an update fortnightly, j Newswire every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on November 3, 2026 and October 30, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | lire | j Newswire |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $9.99 | Free — better |
| Rating | 4.4 (158 ratings) | 5.0 (4 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 68.3% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 158 — better | 4 |
| Update frequency | Fortnightly — better | Every 3 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Paid | Free — better |
| Best chart rank | #6 — better | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 15.6 — better | 18.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 168 MB | 71 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 17+ |
| Developer | Kunal Sood | Jeff Hodsdon |
Customer experience
lire
j Newswire
Bugs and requests
lire
Reported bugs
7 issues- Crashes on launch
- Incorrect feed display
- Articles not opening
- Overlapping UI elements
- Sync errors with FreshRSS and Wallabag
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- Revert to old articles after sync
- VoiceOver issues after update
Requested features
9 requests- Bulk unsubscribe option
- Ability to add multiple feeds at once
- Custom keyword filtering
- Highlight/annotate articles
- Embedded video support
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- Automatic article categorization
- Sharing options
- PDF export
- Multilingual support
j Newswire
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
lire
- Generous Tip$0.99
- Massive Tip$1.99
- Amazing Tip$4.99
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- Humongous Tip$9.99
- Stupendous Tip$19.99
j Newswire
No in-app purchases
